Mixing Colors on Canvas
by Gravalanche
Summary: Eight has to adapt to inkling society, Three has to adapt to Eight. As those two grow closer Marina is forced to confront feelings that she had been trying to ignore for so long. Just romance fluff that I wrote for fun when I couldn't sleep. Enjoy if you want to. Agent 24 and Pearlina.
1. Chapter 1

With a last super jump to the copter, the statue fight was officially out of Eight's hands. Through half-lidded eyes she watched Pearl place a giant megaphone down, followed by a beam battle that Eight's mind understood was cool even if she was too sleepy to really be excited by it. Once she had confirmed that Pearl's screaming was more powerful than the blender laser, she laid down next to the inkling agent she beaten earlier and closed her eyes.

Three groaned in pain. What the fuck had she done to herself this time. Her eye and the area around it felt like it was on fire, and wherever she was it had a serious amount of wind. Alright, step one; open your eyes... Fuck alright, step one version 2, open only the eye that is not on fire. 3 was more than a bit surprised to be face to face with a sleeping octoling.

"Shit, where" Three began while awkwardly starting to get to her feet. In her haste her hand smashed into the octoling's knee. Given that a knee offered less resistance than the metal deck Three was expecting, Three immediately crashed back to the floor.

"Oh good, you're awake," Cuttlefish said as he sidled over. "How're you feeling?"

"Uh," Three began, "Confused and my eye hurts like hell, but I guess if you're here that means that I'm probably not currently captured." Three gestured at the octoling while finally taking a good look around. "What happened to me? I don't remember anything and all of this is..." Three's voice grew louder as she recognized more elements she had never seen before; helicopters, giant statues, and more than one octoling. Callie and Marie were nowhere to be found. Fuck, how much had she forgotten? Months, or years. Three's growing panic was cut off when a pair of arms wrapped around her.

Even with her extreme sleep deprivation, Eight couldn't sleep through someone falling down on her knee. Interrupting her first rest in over 2 days was a capital offense, but it was a sentence that she could deliver later. Right now her eyes weren't opening for anything short of the apocalypse.

"What happened to me? I don't remember anything and all of this is..." Eight heard Three say. She heard the rise in pitch and speed over the sentence and recognized what Three was feeling. She had been right there at the start of the tests, and even after all the mem cakes had been located she still barely had pieces. After a few agonizing moments of indecision, she came to a compromise. Without getting up or opening her eyes, she wrapped her arms around the inkling agent.

"Safe. Sleep now. No talk panic." No, that was barely understandable; Eight needed to do better. She rallied her tired mind around the problem, quietly wishing she had spent more time talking with Cuttlefish down in the metro. "I also forgot. We can do it together." There, that made sense right? She mentally patted herself on the back for a job well done, pulled the inkling in tighter, and promptly fell asleep again.

Three blindly accepted the hug. She leaned into the warm body, grateful to have something to cling to. Tears started to sting her eyes, which she held back as strongly as she could. She wasn't sure how much time passed as she fought her emotions back down. Cuttlefish, never one to intervene, didn't say anything for however long it was. "Thank you," Three said eventually, "I needed that."

"You'll have to tell her when she wakes up," Pearl responded. Three looked up at the new voice.

"Uh, hi." Three realized the rather compromising position she was still in with Eight and began to extract herself from Eight's grip.

"No you don't," Pearl scolded, "We've been trying to get her to go to sleep for days, and you're not interrupting it for anything."

"But," Three began. Both she and Pearl stopped dead when Eight made a small noise. She shifted around before falling still again. Three suddenly became very aware of the steady breath against her neck. "That's ridiculous, I can't just stay here." Her point was punctuated by Eight nuzzling deeper into Three's neck. "Th..." Whatever Three was going to say, it abruptly ended when Three felt the octoling's chest press into her back. A blush spread over Three's face with startling speed. "She's too cuddly," Three whispered, attempting to not provoke Eight's sleeping body into making their position even more compromising.

Pearl cackled as silently as she could at the dire expression on Three's face. "You've been up for too long as well. Sleep; we can sort things out from here." There was a long pause, during which Three continued to nonverbally plead with Pearl. "Oh, hold on just a moment," Pearl said. Three perked up. "I need to do something real quick, don't move." Three didn't miss the devious grin on Pearl's face as she rummaged through her pockets. Three didn't have time to debate the merits of saying anything before Pearl had gotten her phone out. "Now, if you could just keep that blush up this'll be perfect."

Three immediately and unwillingly complied with Pearl's wishes. *Snap*

*Snap*

Three resigned herself to her fate and closed her eyes.

*Snap*

*Snap*

Wow, Three was a lot more tired than she realized.

*Snap*

The rest of the world was already starting to fade away. She was only vaguely aware of the excessive number of pictures that Pearl was taking.

*Snap*

"Pearl, leave the agents alone," Marina chided.

A voice Three didn't recognize said something and the pictures stopped, but she was already too far gone to think much about it. Only a few moments later, Three was gone to the world.

Pearl looked over the photos she had and decided that she had sufficiently captured the adorable display. "Fiiiine," Pearl said as she put her phone away.

"How's your voice doing after that scream?"

"It'll be wrecked tomorrow, but right now I'm feelin' fine," Pearl struck a pose for Marina's amusement.

"I hope you're so cavalier tomorrow," Marina teased, "I'm sure there'll be no need to complain all day, right?"

"Hmph," Pearl pouted at Marina. There was a companionable silence between the two.

"Oh yeah," Marina remembered, "There's no energy readings from the statue, we can head back now." "Can…" Pearl began but Marina cut her off, "AND, I already called us in sick from announcements for the day."

"Have I ever said I love you?" Pearl enthused.

Marina hated it when Pearl said things like that. She hated that Pearl wasn't going to mean that the way Marina so badly wanted her to. She hated that it stopped her from telling herself that she just thought of Pearl as a friend. More than anything, the guilt of it tore her up. She felt like she was violating Pearl in some way, by her mind twisting Pearl's innocent joy into Marina's perverse desires.

Marina turned away to hide her expression. "Yep, everyday," Marina tried to force herself to match Pearl's levity. To anyone but Pearl, it would've been a flawless disguise.

"Everything alright Rina?" Pearl asked.

"Oh, yeah, 100%. Just, you know, stressful. Saving the world," Marina responded.

"... Alright," Pearl said. Another awkward pause. "Homeward bound!" Pearl shouted, quickly concluding the topic. Eight mumbled something unintelligible in sleeptalking protest and managed to further entangle her and Three's legs. "Homeward bound," Pearl repeated at a much quieter volume, "I'll go tell them to turn us around." Marina nodded in assent and the two went their separate ways. As the statue sunk back into the waves, the helicopter fleet began to make its way back to civilization.

I haven't written anything in years so please tear it apart in the comments. Hope everyone enjoyed.


	2. Chapter 2

Three woke up slowly. Slower than she should've, she was going to have to double down on her training. She couldn't afford to slip like that in the field. Thankfully, she was warm and comfortable enough that she was in some sort of bed and unlikely to be jumped the moment she moved. She moved to stand up but found herself held down.

Three immediately went into high alert. This bed was more comfortable than the mismash of cushions she used as a bed at home. What could she last remember? She frantically craned her neck around to try and get a better view of whatever was holding her immobile. She felt her head bash into something behind her and heard a startled squawk.

As predicted, Pearl's voice was destroyed. Though neither of them enjoyed shirking their duties, they weren't above making the most of an extended break and had dedicated the afternoon to lounging around the living room. "Riiiina," Pearl rasped, waving her arms as wildly as she could without sitting up. "Quiet, you need to rest your voice," Marina admonished, not moving her gaze from her phone. Enough octolings were getting through to the surface that some news outlets had noticed, and Marina was reading through every comment of the inkopolis residents. Even if she was famous, she wasn't above being a bit worried about how the squids would accept her people.

Pearl was saved from escalating her attention grabbing efforts by Eight's indignant squawk. Marina looked up, "Sounds like the agents are awake. Or at least one of them." She put her phone away. Pearl quickly wrote a message on the notepad she had claimed for the day and showed it to Marina, "Money on Three woke up and couldn't handle the cuddles?"

"You're on," Marina answered without hesitation, "I'll start some food, you go round them up." Pearl nodded and Marina opened the cupboards to see what they could quickly throw together.

Eight woke up very quickly. Similar to Three, the manner of her waking gave her some concern, though her concern revolved more around "ouch" and "I'm under attack" and less around getting rusty in her training. Despite her massive loss of pre-metro memories, Eight hadn't lost an ounce of her combat instincts or mental acuity. It also left her with very few memories to keep track of when figuring out what was happening. Three had just headbutt her. Her first priority was to make sure that Tartar hadn't somehow re-established control. Thankfully, Eight had a major advantage in that she already had Three grappled.

While Eight still had the initiative she had to get a clear view of Three's face while simultaneously making sure that the potentially tartar-controlled inkling couldn't retaliate. Eight jumped above Three while grabbing both of the inkling's wrist in her left hand. With only a moment of pause, Eight flipped Three onto her back and pinned her wrists on the headboard. The octoling centered her weight onto Three's pelvis, leaving the inkling helplessly kicking against their still tangled legs. Eight pressed their faces close together, staring into Three's right eye for any signs that the stain was still more than scar tissue.

Three's world had just flipped itself over and she found herself even further constrained. "Fuck, Three gasped out, partially from the pain of her wrists grinding up against the wood and partially from surprise. "Hey guys…" Pearl whispered with all the gusto her voice could muster as she threw open the door. Before either inkling could continue, Pearl and Three's eyes met for the longest moment of either of their lives.

The first thing Pearl noticed was the position of the two agents. The way Eight was holding her body above Three, with Three's wrists in a stranglehold. The two cephalopod's faces being so close together. Three's explicit gasp immediately before Pearl entered. The disheveled appearance of both agents. Combine that with the sheets obscuring everything below the shoulders, and it wasn't hard for Pearl to draw a conclusion about what she had walked in on.

"B… W…" Pearl's eyes asked a far more coherent question than her voice. There's nothing wrong here; we just need to explain to Pearl that nothing is happening, Three rationalized. Before she could open her mouth, Three felt a hand on her chin. No, Eight couldn't be doing something more. Three felt her gaze being forced back to EIght's face. Three was too paralyzed to resist. "No," Eight demanded, "Look at me."

Three was going to have a heart attack any moment now and ascend out of this situation. It was over, there was no salvaging this. Even if Three could come up with a reasonable explanation for this, there's no way she'd be able to deliver it convincingly. Eight leaned in closer to the point that Three could feel her nose touch the octoling's cheek.

That was too much for Pearl to handle. "Take your time," Pearl yelled and fled the room. Slamming the door behind her. "Pearl, your voice," Marina could be heard yelling back from the other room. Pearl rushed up to Marina and immediately began making a series of noises. It wasn't the best description, but even with two languages under her belt Marina was utterly unable to make any sense of it beyond "Pearl is distressed." Pearl eventually scrambled for her notebook, and wrote SEX in large font on the center of the sheet. Ordinarily Marina would write it off as Pearl being overly excitable, but the inkling's blush and distress spoke for itself. Marina grabbed her phone and started playing some loud music.

Three was left frozen, staring deeply into Eight's eyes. First she noticed the deep blue shade they had, then the purpose and intensity that they held while flitting around. Three could feel the octoling's controlled breath in contrast with her own near hyperventilation. Three traced the curves and points of the tinge that circled each of Eight's eyes. She had never seen an octoling's eye mask this close, it was a difference between the two species but also a similarity.

While Three was involuntarily examining the octoling's eyes and face, Eight finished her examination of the inkling. She couldn't find the slightest sign of the telltale brainwashing sludge. "Sorry about that," Eight said, releasing Three's chin and leaning back to a safe distance, "I needed to make sure that you hadn't been taken over again."

"Ah, um, that's… good," Three was still recovering, "could you warn me next time? That was… fucking intense." There was a pause. "And, could you let go of my hands please." Eight sheepishly did as Three asked. When Three immediately massaged her wrists, Eight winced more than Three did. "Sorry," Eight repeated.

"Shit," Three suddenly remembered their hosts outside. The idols still thought they were… Unable to finish the sentence, Three flushed and leapt to her feet. "It's not what it looked like," she was already declaring as she ran out the door.

Eight tilted her head in confusion but followed along.

Pearl and Marina's apartment was essentially a kitchen/living room combo with a handful of bedrooms spoked off of it, so Three's outburst was easily audible even over the music. Pearl and Marina were each making their breakfast food of choice, Marina swapping out waffles from the iron while browsing her phone and Pearl making a game of flipping pancakes progressively higher in the air. "Thank god, I hate that song," Marina said as she closed the music app, "So how'd it go?"


End file.
